Social Networking and Elections
WWW Talk, Greetings. In a 2010 Scientific American article, Tim Berners-Lee indicated some concerns about social networking websites. Concerns were expressed about social networking websites which were described as walled gardens. Concerns indicated included that social networking websites were walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web and he warned Americans that, if Facebook and others proceeded unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands and we could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. In January of this year, parties, including Politico, purchased bulk social networking data of a political nature from Facebook. Social media has forever changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency, said John F. Harris, editor in chief of Politico. Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the political dialogue among voters and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation. Amidst privacy, civil liberty, and other societal concerns, resultant concerns include a need for a new reasoning, possibly new legislation, with regard to some political processes in the information age such as reapportionment, redistricting, or gerrymandering. In 1994, Ted Harrington, political science chair at the University of North Carolina indicated there is no issue that is more sensitive to politicians of all colors and ideological persuasions than redistricting. It will determine who wins and loses for eight years. Voters should have easy access to the platform and campaign information of federal, state and local candidates. Even with the expansive potential of web-based news, we can observe that national news and election news have continued to eclipse state and local news and election news. It could be that insufficient menu systems on news websites, such as Google News, have contributed to the perpetuation of partisan politics, some coattail effects, and the status quo. The United States' two-party system more resembles those of formerly British island nations (e.g. Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Figi, Grenada, Jamaica, Malta, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago) or island British territories (e.g. Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands) than the multi-party political systems of some larger and populous nations with historical ties to the British Empire (e.g. Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Jordon, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Great Britain). As we approach two years since the aforementioned Scientific American article, a broad and comprehensive list of concerns can be compiled from the various opinions of many scientists and technologists. A socialization industry is a cause for concern with regard to democratic elections. It occurs that computer technology, P2P technology, can facilitate decentralized socialization scenarios on the Internet. So too can results of research into networking protocols for distributed social networking applications, e.g. HTTP 2.0 based, XML-based technologies, as well as developer libraries. Kind regards, Adam Sobieski
RE: United States Cyberpolicy after the ITU WCIT Conference
between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The construction of a new computer security communication network is both timely and appropriate. As the United States approaches a fiscal cliff, we can consider that our tax dollars can be better spent than on previous cyberpolicy approaches and other remnant policy items from the previous administration. As we move forward, for numerous reasons including: stimulating the economy, job creation, and preparedness for excellence in STEM education with digital textbooks, our plans for leaping across the fiscal chasm can and should include a megaproject, the construction of a large number of new scientific laboratories across the United States, an investment in our American future. Kind regards, Adam Sobieski
Education Technology Research and Development Funding in the United States
/) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (http://www.ccsso.org/). Another policy-related topic was the discussion of an app store model for digital textbook sales to schoolboards. Civil discourse has indicated other proposals including technologies for state and local schoolboards to each review each digital textbook from an arbitrarily large set of digital textbooks. Digital textbook selection processes are topical. Scientists and technologists can consider the best policies to achieve goals, nationwide goals have been indicated for the 2015 - 2016 schoolyear; digital textbooks are to be in United States classrooms by that schoolyear. There are important policy topics to consider and to discuss with regard to the use of public monies, tax dollars, and the funding of education technology research and development excellence en route to and after achieving the 2015 - 2016 goals. Kind regards, Adam Sobieski
Digital Textbooks and App Stores
WWW-Talk, In the context of digital documents, books and textbooks, when I hear app store, I think about concerns that the public might have, concerns about interest groups, lobbyists, syndicates, quasi-government organizations, nationalist agendas, and conspiracies reaching into the highest levels of government. Some Americans have concerns that all but political scientists are underinformed about what some bureaucrats' agendas might be with regard to the Web, behind a facade of some telepersonable Democrats in the White House. The current administration presides over an almost Ford-era executive branch which includes new organizations forged on an anvil of fascism with a hammer of terror. In the current political climate, in the present day United States of America, there exist numerous partisan, bipartisan and nonpartisan interest groups as well as numerous lobbying organizations each having an interest in the information available to the public, the information in the news, the information on the Web, the content of certain documents, certain books and certain textbooks. Some Americans have concerns about state participation in what can be referred to as a ghastly molecule of information corporatism. For instance, there are a few contentious American history topics, social studies topics, topics including the years of the George W. Bush administration. Some such topics were a part of a Texastbooks controversy (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031700560.html). While many Americans have opinions, including about a wider set of content-related topics, a free marketplace, with a diverse set of products, and distributed, decentralized consumer processes, by elected and well-informed schoolboards, is how we do things in the United States of America. Many Americans are still somewhat upset about when a syndicate tried to indicate that digital textbooks should be sold to schoolboards across the United States of America via a centralized app store model. Many Americans are somewhat upset about sponsored stories in places of socialization, free speech and assembly. Kind regards, Adam Sobieski
Social Media, Technology, Software and American Public Schools
WWW-Talk, A contemporary topic includes social media and public schools, as part of curriculum models, studying-related or homework-related activities, or in the context of recreational Web use during school. Some web articles support social networking websites for students in public schools: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03networking.h03.html , http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/05/20/teaching-in-a-socially-networked-classroom/ . There is also at least one survey of K-12 educators about social networking and content-sharing tools: http://www.edweb.net/fimages/op/K12Survey.pdf. Marketing can explain a prevalence of articles encouraging the use of Web-based social media applications in schools, compared to other opinions. Some article authors are also authors of books about social media and public schools. Companies so marketing could be doing so because they want to advertise to young Americans, to advertise to them specific brands of clothes, specific music albums or entertainment. Some social media websites have made use of Sponsored Stories, the topic of a class action lawsuit, Fraley v. Facebook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraley_v._Facebook,_Inc). As Facebook builds its ads business and gives advertisers more ways to reach different audiences, a new lexicon has emerged. The social network has invented terms like Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads and Promoted Posts, but it doesn’t always explain them or maintain consistent usage over time, especially since the same ads serve different levels of advertisers, who purchase them through varying channels (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/01/11/understanding-the-difference-between-facebook-sponsored-stories-page-post-ads-promoted-posts-and-marketplace-ads/). A solution for public schools to get all of the features of technology-enhanced socialization software without any of their concerns includes that public schools can purchase and make use of application servers for intranets and the Internet. Educators could then configure and make available software applications for their students on those public school servers interoperably with digital textbook tablet computers. Each school district could install and configure specific software applications onto their servers for classroom use by educators. Students could access such applications from inside schoolbuildings utilizing intranets and from outside of schoolbuildings utilizing wide area networks or the Internet. Each school can host their own Web applications, for example as per: http://www.schooname.schooldistrict.state.edu or http://www.schoolname.schooldistrict.state.us . Rationale for school districts purchasing servers, equipment, and computer software includes encouraging capitalist processes, competitions to manufacture, sell and steward versioning products tailored to educational settings to enhance educational results and outcomes. The combination of adequate school district equipment funds and teacher involvement in the purchase of or activation of computer software from options available to them, utilizing their classroom observations and tacit knowledge of what is working, can result in tasked development, rapid versioning, and the utilization of emerging data and metrics, reports, and other topics from education science and other multidisciplinary research. Such processes can expedite advancements in educational technology and software, including software simultaneously providing technology-enhanced socialization and scholastic features. Kind regards, Adam Sobieski
